Greatest Hoaxes of All Time

A hoax is an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real. Here is a selection of some April Fool’s Day Hoaxes.

BIG BEN GOES DIGITAL

1980: The BBC reported that Big Ben, in order to keep up

with the times, was going to be given a digital readout. The
announcement received a huge response from listeners shocked
and angered by the proposed change. The BBC Japanese service
also announced that the clock hands would be sold to the first four
listeners to contact them. One Japanese seaman in the mid-Atlantic
immediately radioed in a bid.

ONE-WAY HIGHWAY
In 1991 the London Times announced that the Department
of Transport had finalized a plan to ease congestion on the
M25, the circular highway surrounding London. The capacity
of the road would be doubled by making the traffic on both
carriageways travel in the same direction. On Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays the traffic would travel clockwise;
while on Tuesdays and Thursdays it would travel anticlockwise.
The plan would not operate on weekends. It was said that the scheme was almost certain to meet with the cabinet’s approval, despite voices of protest coming from some quarters.
 One of the protestors included a spokesman for Labour Transport who reportedly warned that
“Many drivers already have trouble telling their left from their right.” Also, a resident of Swanley,
 Kent was quoted as saying, “Villagers use the motorway to make shopping trips to Orpington.
. On some days this will be a journey of two miles, and on others a journey of 117 miles.
 The scheme is lunatic.” Thankfully, the scheme existed only in the minds of the writers at the Times.

WEEPING LENIN

Over the years numerous statues of the Virgin Mary have been
known to miraculously start weeping, but in 1995 an Italian statue of
Lenin in the town of Cavriago joined the club. A huge crowd gathered
to witness the milky white tears rolling down the statue’s metal
cheeks. The crowd remained for hours until the tears were eventually
revealed to be a prank.

MOSCOW’S SECOND SUBWAY
In 1992 the Moskovskaya Pravda announced that
the winds of capitalism transforming Russia would
bring further changes for the residents of Moscow.
Apparently plans had been fi nalized to build a new
Moscow subway system. Of course, there was
nothing wrong with the city’s current subway. But in
the spirit of capitalism, the second system would be built to promote “the interests of competition.”

FLYING PENGUINS
On 1 April 2008, the BBC announced that camera crews filming near the Antarctic for its natural history series Miracles of Evolution had captured footage of Adélie penguins taking to the air. It even offered a video clip of these flying penguins, which became one of the most viewed videos on the internet.